The Public Interest in Preventing Breaches of The Peace
In R v Coney (1882) 8 QBD 534, members of the public who attended an illegal prize fight in a public place were convicted of aiding and abbetting an assault. They were cheering on the boxers whose conduct was likely to and did produce a breach of the peace, so any mutual consent given by the fighters was vitiated by the public nature of the entertainment irrespective of the degree of injury caused or intended. Hence, the principal offence was committed and, since it would not have taken place had there been no crowd to bet and support the fighters, the secondary parties were also liable.
Read more about this topic: Consent (criminal Law)
Famous quotes containing the words public, interest, preventing and/or peace:
“When Paul Bunyan’s loggers roofed an Oregon bunkhouse with shakes, fog was so thick that they shingled forty feet into space before discovering they had passed the last rafter.”
—State of Oregon, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The prairies were dust. Day after day, summer after summer, the scorching winds blew the dust and the sun was brassy in a yellow sky. Crop after crop failed. Again and again the barren land must be mortgaged for taxes and food and next year’s seed. The agony of hope ended when there was not harvest and no more credit, no money to pay interest and taxes; the banker took the land. Then the bank failed.”
—Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968)
“If anything characterizes the cultural life of the seventies in America, it is an insistence on preventing failures of communication.”
—Richard Dean Rosen (b. 1949)
“I am available to make love with Saddam Hussein to achieve peace in the Middle East.”
—Ilona Staller (b. 1951)